Lighting a candle, part one

 "There is not enough darkness in all the world to put out the light of even one small candle" – Robert Alden

The end of daylight savings time came as a shock to me. Perhaps I’m still not used to it coming so late: it used to end the last Sunday of October. A quick Google search informs me that the switch to the first Sunday in November happened in 2005. I guess I’m not as graceful a pivoter in my golden years.

I mentioned the shock to my therapist who reported he’s had many clients struggling with the evenings darkening sooner. It seemed like the dusk on November 6th was more than an hour earlier than the evening before.

Noticing a smattering of multicolored holiday lights springing up in mid-November, I decided to join the movement: I installed strings of lights on our shrubs soon afterwards. As always, I'll keep the lights on at least until Epiphany (Three Kings Day, Old Christmas (Amish), Little Christmas (what my mother called it): January 6th).

Light is so important to our mood. Light boxes are one aid. Lighting my living quarters certainly affects my mood. For years, in order to be energy-efficient, we had compact flourscent bulbs throughout the house. In cold weather they warm up slowly (we keep our house in the low 60s) and don’t cast full light immediately. The newer LED lights we’ve installed are more efficient and respond immediately. As the winter solstice nears, I find myself flipping every switch on in my 'new' kitchen, except for the sink disposall.

Our sun makes life on earth possible. It also makes life more bearable. (Fun fact: lowly fungi play a vital role as well. Practically unseen, their tiny tendrils transport nutrients and water from long distances to the plants’ roots. In exchange, plants share the sugars produced through photosynthesis.)

As the days continue to shorten this month, I hope you can take time to find some extra light, in as simple an action as turning on the kitchen light, enjoying the holiday displays, or walking in the sunshine.

I love the New England tradition of putting lit candles in windows. A symbol of welcome and warmth, they serve to push the darkness away.

(Another fun fact: Robert Alden (1836-1911) was a Congregationalist minister knew Laura Ingels Wilder. She used him as a character in two of her Little House on the Prairie books.)

Mount Shasta

 In 1995, I took a 10-week road trip around the country with my kids in a pop-up tent trailer. In California, my sister and I travelled from Orange County (near L.A.) to Seattle. In far northern California I discovered Mt. Shasta and fell hopelessly in love.

Mount Shasta is a majestic peak in the Cascade Range, which includes Mt. Hood in Oregon and Mount St. Helen’s and Mount Rainier in Washington State. It rises 14,179 ft in elevation and is home to several glaciers. So why had I never heard of it?

If Mt. Shasta were in Germany or Italy or France, it would be as famous as the Matterhorn. But it is only the fifth highest mountain in California and ‘only’ 11th in prominence in the United States (how high the summit rises above its surroundings).

We camped within sight of the mountain and I reluctantly left it the next morning.

As I write this, my husband and I are on a West Coast road trip. I originally planned it for 2020, but we know what happened that year. This year, we flew into Seattle and rented a car to drive through Oregon and into California to see the Pacific Northwest and visit friends and family. High on my list of ‘can’t be missed’ destinations was Mt. Shasta. I have a framed photo on my office wall and gaze at it daily. I’ve told countless people of my 1995 discovery (including you now).

When we arrived in Seattle, smoke from wildfires diminished visibility. Seattle and Portland, Oregon, were ranked first and second globally for the poorest air quality. As we entered northern California, I wondered if I would even see my beloved Mt. Shasta. Finally, I rounded a bend on Interstate 5 and there it was, looming as majestic as ever, though grey with atmospheric smoke.

A doctor friend once told me that if you take the time to get to know someone, anyone, you are likely to discover great sorrow in their life. Most of us experience sorrow, disappointment, and even tragedy. Sometimes it can feel like life has greyed us out.

Mt. Shasta offers hope. Although the smoke dimmed its visibility, it still rises triumphant from the ground, firm and steadfast, unchanged by the air around it.

The wildfires will subside and the air quality recover. Fresh snow will fall and Mt. Shasta’s glory will be fully visible to all who visit. But Mt. Shasta didn’t change. The smoke could never diminish its true nature, only hide it temporarily from our eyes.

Denial

 Looking back over my behavior, how could I fail to see that I was sick, very sick?

I’d spent two weeks feeling exhausted with intermittent high fevers and night sweats. But each day I thought I was getting better, until the fever would hit again or I’d find myself unable to forgo a nap.

Two of our grandkids spent the week with us and I played the electronic babysitter card: turn on a movie and sleep on the couch.

Then we went on our annual ward campout at Camp Joseph, the Church-owned campground at the Joseph Smith birthplace in Sharon, Vermont. I had planned it to be as low-stress as possible. My son Sam had agreed to handle all the food. We rented cabins so we didn’t have to set up tents and sleep on the ground. But it wasn’t enough.

Camp Joseph is a lovely, well-groomed campground. It has rolling lawns and copses of trees. Very easy camping. But just walking less than a city block to the bathhouse wore me out. And I fell three times. Jim was standing next to me during one. I told him that it was my gardening sneakers. Not wanting to take my new sneakers camping, I had donned my gardening sneakers. After the second fall I looked at the soles: they were slippery smooth with no tread. (I tossed them as soon as I had a chance.)

Besides the falls and exhaustion (I carried a collapsible camp chair and sat down any time I wasn’t moving from place to place.) I had mental confusion. I couldn’t remember the date: I was confident it lay somewhere between August 14 and 30 but could get no closer. I’d been planning this campout with all four grandkids, Jim, and Sam and Savannah for months. But the date was not accessible in my brain.

All of that and I blamed the falls on my no-tread sneakers.

How often do we see ourselves clearly? Do we blame our circumstances on no-tread sneakers?

After the campout, my doctor discovered a kidney infection and with a simple course of antibiotics (Thank you, Alexander Fleming!) I recovered. In August I slept ten hours out of every twenty four. Now I’m back to eight and have two more hours in my day.

Is this a harbinger of old age? I know a woman, older than me, who had to use a walker. Then she embarked in some serious physical therapy. Now she is walker-free. We all run down eventually, if we’re blessed to live long enough. This time I recovered.

Grape Jelly

 I love jam and jelly. My mom taught me to make jam (jelly always seemed so much more work and besides, I like fruit pulp.) We specialized in tomato jam (seasoned with cinnamon and cloves). These days I make cranberry-rhubarb and blueberry.

One day, I wanted a snack, something small and light. I opened the fridge and got out the jar of Welch’s grape jelly. I never buy the stuff: I’ve graduated to Trappist brand. The Welch’s probably entered the house during a family reunion last summer (and is still unfinished a year later). I took a spoonful and had such a feeling of wellbeing: I thought it was the sugar.

But the next time I craved a spoonful, a memory came to mind: a bitter penicillin pill tucked in a spoonful of grape jelly and offered by my mom. I realized that grape jelly, which nowadays I regularly eschew, is a comfort food for me.

I had an odd relationship with pills as a young girl. It was an ordeal for me to swallow pills. I still have trouble, even though I have plenty of practice. Between vitamins and psych meds, I swallow ten pills a day. And I still occasionally gag.

One day my mom and I came upon a solution (when the jelly wasn’t sufficient). I kneaded some white bread into a mass of goo and wrapped the pill completely. Without the bitter taste I was able to swallow it. Mom pointed out that the wrapped pill was larger and should be harder to swallow, but for me the wrapping was just what I needed to get the pill down.

I probably won’t make a habit of buying a large jar of Welch’s grape jelly. My homemade cranberry-rhubarb jam and Trappist’s blueberry, cherry, and ginger, hold charms Welch’s can’t match. But the grape jelly warms something in the deep recesses of my heart.

Mozart's Clarinet

 Our Danube River cruise was magical, gliding effortlessly through Central Europe. We spent a day at Gottweig Abbey, high above the Danube in Austria, and that evening we attended a concert in Vienna. It was a small ensemble: three violins, a viola, 'cello, flute, clarinet, string bass, and percussion, with Pierre Pichler conducting. The overture to The Marriage of Figaro opened the program, followed by other familiar Mozart pieces, including A Little Night Music.

After the applause, the first violinist unexpectedly called out, “Maestro, would you like to play the violin?” Pichler took her proffered violin, made a dramatic motion with the bow and produced an abominable sound. He handed the instrument back and started towards the bassist, who shook his head vehemently. Then the clarinetist offered. He stood next to the conductor and gave instructions while continuing to hold the instrument. “Blow…No, blow harder. Now move your hands.” Pichler extended his arms out to the side and vigorously waggled his hands at the wrists. “No, put your hands on the clarinet.” The conductor placed his fingers on the clarinet, took a breath, and the opening glissando of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue filled the air, followed by the adagio second movement of Mozart's clarinet concerto. (start at minute 12:55 for Anngunnir Arnadottir’s performance.)

Amadeus is largely fiction, but Salieri's love of Mozart's music engendered a deep appreciation in me when I first saw it in Bloomington, Indiana, (home of the world-class Indian University School of Music) in 1984. As the adagio swept over me in Vienna, I could hear Salieri's description of a Mozart serenade:

The beginning…like a rusty sequeezebox…And then, suddenly, high above it, an oboe. A single note, hanging there, unwavering. Until a clarinet took it over, sweetened it into a phrase of such delight…

This was a music I’d never heard, filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing. It seemed to me that I was hearing the voice of God.

(hear the entire serenade that Salieri describes)

Yes, "such unfulfillable longing."

Terezin, Czechia

On our second day in Prague we took a bus tour through the lovely Czech countryside to the small town of Terezin. It was built in 1780 as a military fortress by Hapsburg Emperor Joseph II and named for his mother, Empress Maria Theresa. In German it is known as Theresienstadt (Theresa's City).

It was never attacked by the Prussians and later became a camp for political prisoners.

In 1940 the Nazis converted it into a Gestapo prison and in 1941 a Jewish ‘ghetto’ was established there. Although it wasn’t an extermination camp, over 33,000 people died there from horrible overcrowding, disease, and starvation. In all, 150,000 people were sent there, including 15,000 children. About 88,000 were later transported to Auschwitz and other extermination camps.

Our guide emphasized that although it wasn’t a ‘death camp,’ it was full of unspeakable misery and terror. I was touched by a display of children’s drawings. Some were stark depictions of the camp, others hopeful, happy drawings of their lives before imprisonment. The adults in the camp worked tirelessly to make the children’s lives as normal as possible in a grotesquely abnormal setting. They would teach school, prepared to stop in an instant if a guard appeared.

Sobering is too weak a word to describe the feelings while visiting Terezin. When I was in high school, we would glibly parrot, “Man’s inhumanity to man” as the most likely theme of any serious work of literature. Can such horror be adequately described?

The Moldau in Prague

23 Jun 2022

 

I love “The Moldau” by Bedrich Smetana. It’s a symphonic poem, the second movement of Má Vlast and a rich depiction of the river from its source in the Bohemian forest to the city of Prague. Moldau is the German name: in Czech it’s the Vltava.

I’ve played the piece in two different orchestras over the years.

Years ago I went to Education Week at Brigham Young University. It’s a week of free college courses for grownups. Michael Ballam, a professional musician and celebrity from Logan, Utah, gave an inspirational talk in the huge Marriott Center. He spoke of the immense power of music and recommended that we all make a musical first aid kit on an audio cassette. (yeah, this was 1993). I’ve never done it, but in case you are around when I fall into a coma, "The Moldau" and Gustav Holst’s "Jupiter" from The Planets are my top two choices. I guess at this point you could just pull them up on YouTube. (I just did.)

Michael Ballam told a moving story about an elderly German woman in a nursing home in Utah. He came to play the piano and lead a Christmas carol sing-along. The woman typically sat huddled in her wheelchair, mute and unresponsive. As Ballam sang a carol in German, someone noticed the woman’s lips moving: she was softly singing: her first words in years. Music can reach into our depths.

We left Boston Wednesday evening and arrived in Frankfurt, Germany around 7 a.m. Thursday. Since we lost 6 hours in the time zone adjustment, I only got 3 hours of sleep, sitting upright in economy. It’s now 8 p.m. and we’re at our hotel in Prague. I’m not sleepy. That would be great news for most normal humans but for me, it’s okay to feel good, but not too good. I monitor my sleep daily to avoid hypomania.

Nothing to do right now but hope I can sleep tonight.

In the meanwhile, I’ll savor our day. When we arrived in Prague, I realized that I was woefully unprepared. Our introductory walking tour wasn’t until Friday. We got a map and directions to the downtown shopping mall. But Prague streets are not at all at right angles, even less than Boston. We eventually found the mall, but then what’s the word for bookstore? There was Gap and Armani, Puma and Foot Locker. No Barnes & Noble. We did find it (Luxor) and bought a tour book (in English).

Back out on the streets and sidewalks of diminutive square paving stones, we happened upon the Municipal Hall. The clerk at the box office was skeptical that we would enjoy the concert of singing in Czech. Turned out it was sold out anyway.

We ate delicious borscht at Pekny Bistro, charming and quiet at two in the afternoon. We walked along the Moldau. I seemed to hear the woodwinds burble upstream in the Bohemian forest and the ‘cellos pound out the country beat of the exuberant wedding festivities.

24 June 2022

This evening I sat in St. Salvador Church near Charles Bridge in Prague, listening to the opening notes of "The Moldau." Satisfying, even though it was just a six-piece string orchestra.

After the concert we sat outside to eat traditional Czech food (dumplings are featured prominently). It began to rain and we were grateful for the restaurant's awning. I had bought a black umbrella decorated with sheet music at the Lobkowicz Palace. A great investment for our half-hour walk back to the hotel.

By the way, I slept 10 hours last night, a total of 13 over two nights. That will do.

Negative Review

 Jim and I have planned an ambitious travel year. In the rush to make up for two and a half years of staying home (mostly), we’ve planned more trips than ever.

Last week was our East Coast trip. In one day we drove 960 miles: Lexington, MA, to Charleston, SC. Jim’s sister and her husband live there and since 2016, the year after David died, we’ve come to Charleston to stay with them and attend Spoleto Festival USA. It’s an immersion into the world of chamber music, opera, dance, and performance art.

Spoleto was cancelled in 2020 and last year Jim flew down on his own. I was deep into my garden: supervising Jim’s nephew Caleb and a teenaged gardener I’d hired to rebuild raised beds with granite pavers from the bottom of our driveway. While creating a new sidewalk in front of our house, workers uncovered them. How long ago was our street was paved in granite block?

This year at Spoleto, we attended a ballet performance that swept me away with the grace of a well-trained human body. We also saw a creative retelling of the classic Puccini opera La Boheme and several chamber concerts hosted by the inimitable Geoff Nuttall at the Dock St. Theater.

A concert featuring Stevie Wonder music had a last minute change when the tenor got sick. Johnny Felder, a local young man and opera chorus member, filled in and had us audience members eating out of his hands.

The day before our last chamber concert a violinist tested positive for covid, so at 11 p.m. the night before, Geoff asked a pianist friend of his what he could play. What we experienced was a breathtaking performance of a Brahms' Variations on a Theme by Handel (not to be confused with his Variations on a Theme by Haydn). Twenty-five variations and then a fugue: played masterfully with no sheet music.

I can’t begin to imagine the skill and talent such a feat requires.

Although I agreed to the crazy itinerary of a one-day 960-mile drive to Charleston, I decided that the ride back should be broken up. Thursday we drove a mere 633 miles. Truth be told, Jim did 85% of the driving that day. On his sister’s recommendation we stopped in Richmond. She had been charmed by the city years before. We walked along a cobblestone street and found City Dogs, a little grill with themed hot dogs, burgers, and Philly cheesesteaks.

After supper we wandered around trying to find the “Canal Walk”. After one dead end we found our way under the interstate and down some stairs to the canal. It was dark and deserted but we pressed on. Later, safe in our motel, we admitted to each other that we were grateful that our walk ended uneventfully.

After our Richmond evening, we checked into a motel in Short Pump, VA. I inexplicably love that name. It has an earthy down-to-earth tone to it. Named for a short pump (what’s a long pump?) under a tavern’s porch, it was on the Richmond Turnpike, which connected that city to Charlottesville, VA.

Our motel room prompted me to write my first negative review. (I have low standards: I’ve slept in my car on more than one occasion: a private bath is deluxe.) The fridge leaked onto the floor, the bathroom door was water-damaged and so swollen that it couldn’t be pushed closed. The kitchenette floor was sticky and the shower and bathtub wall wasn’t clean. But, as Jim said, philosophically, “I’ve seen worse.”

In 2001, we took our six kids, ages 10 to 20, to France, Italy, and the United Kingdom. I had booked rooms in a hotel in London for our first night there. All that night I wished I'd used a travel agent! I hardly slept. It was a three-story walk-up with a shared bathtub (yes, just a tub) which was filthy. The only positive was the price, but even my frugality was strained to breaking. We were definitely in a high crime area. The next day was Sunday and while the kids and I waited outside the Hyde Park Chapel, Jim sallied forth in search of better accommodations. He found a hotel within a row of charming hotels, each featuring an “English breakfast” of eggs, fatty sausage, and toast. It became a comfortable landing place during our London adventures.

Post-script: next morning in Short Pump, Jim gave the list of 'improvements needed' to the motel clerk. He received a 60% refund. I mentioned that in my review.

Chemist or Fool

 A few months ago, I did a very foolish thing. I spied little chunky white grains on the kitchen counter. My mouth watered, and to satisfy the sudden sweets craving, I licked my finger, touched a few grains and put them on my tongue. I immediately spit out the dishwasher detergent. But it had looked so inviting! I gained new understanding of poisoning among roving toddlers.

My mom broke her hip in 1984. (I realize with a shock that at 61, she was younger than I am now) I went to New Jersey with little R’el and one-year-old Peter to help her.

One evening I walked into Mom’s kitchen and found Peter under the sink, a plastic container of dishwasher detergent open beside him.

We called poison control and were told not to induce vomiting. Dishwasher detergent is very caustic and further tissue damage could be caused by vomiting it back up.

I was touched when 24 hours later I received a callback, checking on Peter. He was fine, no worse for the experience. As a young mother, I appreciated the thoughtfulness and care.

Norry and Sunbury memories

 Jim gave me a tremendous gift last Thursday. We spent the week in Maryland and Virginia, visiting my brother and his wife, my niece, and four presidential houses (Mount Vernon, Monticello, Montpelier, and Highlands) in Virginia.

Thursday night he booked us at the charming Stained Glass Inn in Sunbury, PA, kitty-cornered from my old elementary school, St. Michael Archangel. (It’s now called Saint Monica.)

Friday morning Jim had a business phone call and I took a ‘walk’ with R’el: talking on the phone as she walked home from Bellevue Hospital and I explored the south side of Sunbury. When Jim was free we walked along the sea wall dividing Sunbury from the Susquehanna River. I don’t know why we always called it the sea wall, it must have been my dad’s name for it.

I read that the ‘flood wall’ was conceived after a disastrous flood in March 1936. Native Americans had told British colonists that Sunbury flooded every 14 years. Built near the confluence of the north and west branches of the Susquehanna River, it has suffered many floods over the years. The flood wall was officially finished in 1951 but was already protecting the city from flood in 1950. I remember in 1960 my dad telling us that the river had flooded: I was about four years old.

After the walk along the wall and seeing the profile of Shikellamy, we drove to Northumberland, the town across the river where I lived until I was nine. We called it Norry. I felt like Scrooge in Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol, every sight bringing up memories: there’s where the pond was where we ice skated; there’s the street sign that I would swing around calling, “Annnnniiiiieeeee! Can you come out and pla-aaayyyyy? I wasn’t allowed to cross the street and Annie Scully lived across King Street and Seventh Street. So many memories came rushing back and I savored each one.

679 King Street was vacant with a notice in the window. We learned from some people on Eighth Street that a doctor lived there and that perhaps he had died. Since the house was unoccupied,  I peered in the back porch window and remembered practicing piano and meeting the washer repairman. I felt free to walk in the yard, pointing out to Jim where the forsythia, lilacs, magnolia, apple trees, grape arbor, peonies, cherry tree, and sandbox (with plentiful splinters) were. It’s mostly grass now, with one large evergreen to the side. The peach tree, which always looked sickly, was surprisingly healthy. The yard is small; how does it hold so many memories?

What a gift. Thank you, Jim. 

Home-making

 Today Jim and I drove to the home on the “little mountain” that Thomas Jefferson developed over 40 years of his life.

As a teenaged girl I was infatuated with the Thomas Jefferson of the movie, 1776, which was released as I was turning 16. Thomas Jefferson was tall (no boys in my junior high school were as tall as I was) and boyishly handsome with his red ponytail and knickers. Now I prefer the piercing blue eyes of William Daniels (John Adams), but in my girlish eyes it was all about Thomas and how he played the violin for his beautiful and beloved wife. 

Living in Massachusetts for the past 20 years, and influenced by my Adams-phil husband, my feelings for Jefferson had waned.

But Monticello rekindled my appreciation of the man. Jefferson designed so many thoughtful touches to his home. I love how he filled his entry hall with maps and objects of interest. He placed his bed in the wall, opening into both his study and bedroom, so convenient. And his books: he owned about 10,000. We moved closer to that number, buying four books in the gift shop at Monticello along with three at Mt. Vernon.

Both the tours of Mt. Vernon and Monticello emphasize the tremendous work that enslaved people were forced to do to create and maintain these plantations. I’m grateful for the ongoing work to document and bring to light the efforts of countless unnamed people and the need to live up to the ideals of American liberty for all people.

On a lighter note, I’m thinking about house decoration and home. We attended the Washington DC Temple open house with Xiomara and our grandchildren. Jim and I started our marriage there 43 years ago. We stayed with my oldest brother and his wife. Visiting my niece, a busy mother of five children, reminded both of us of raising our children. When R’el was about four, I helped her paint the alphabet, one upper-case and one lower-case letter on twenty-six manilla folders. We taped them together and posted them around the kitchen wall above our heads. We had no living room in those days, just a dedicated playroom with toy shelves and bookcases. How did we ever manage?

When younger moms have asked, I usually say, well, you only have 24 hours in a day. You do what you can and move forward.

But now we don’t have such a busy, demanding life. We can tour Virginia and let others raise children, focus on careers, sustain life. “Sustain life” is a phrase I latched on to in southern Indiana back in the eighties. At a church meeting a woman used it to describe her role as a mother of young children. There were certainly days where that was my goal. I hope I accomplished more; I know I tried.

As I sit here in Gordonsville, Virginia, listening to Bach on YouTube, I’m savoring the memory of our lunch today at La Michoacana restaurant we happened upon in Charlottesville and the sunshine on the mountaintop.

I’m looking forward to returning home and making it ever more of a home. Washington and Jefferson were gardeners: it’s time to plant mine.

My subconscious is my friend!

 I woke up Tuesday thinking, 'my subconscious is my friend.' Actually, I woke up remembering that I’d had a fitful night of sleep, waking several times during the night and realizing each time that I had been dreaming of editing DBSA Boston board meeting minutes. I didn’t remember details of the dreams, just the impression of spending all night puzzling out how to organize the minutes from the raw notes I had typed during the meeting as I struggled to keep up with the lively discussion.

But instead of adding the fact of my dreams to my stress level, I considered them in a different light. All night my subconscious was working on the minutes in many ways: multitasking in a way I could literally only dream of.

My minute-editing career had come to a crisis the week before. Through a series of events, 95% of which were of my own creating, I had to send a 4-month backlog of minutes to the board a few days prior to Monday’s monthly meeting.

Each month for several now I’ve promised myself to edit the minutes within two days of the meeting, while the discussions are fresh in my mind. With my current memory abilities, recall becomes much tougher as time passes.

And each month for several I’ve procrastinated and sent the minutes days before the next meeting rather than days after the previous.

Arising Tuesday morning with the new thought, that my subconscious is my friend, freed me to work on the edits of the Monday meeting with energy and confidence. My subconscious had attended that meeting and was hard at work processing it, not only the actual notes and memories but the emotional baggage and stress I've chosen to carry: all the resistances I have to sitting down and doing the task.

By Tuesday night I had emailed the draft of the minutes to my board members. And now I have 25 days to relax and enjoy and savor the experience of having a dreaded task completely, entirely, and utterly done. (And hope no one sends back any edits, I chuckle to myself.)

IS it me or my meds?

 I’m studying a book by David Karp: is it me or my meds? (Harvard University Press, 2006) I’ve been aware of this book for several years, and finally started reading it a few weeks ago. David Karp is a sociologist who taught at the prestigious Boston College for many years. He’s written or co-authored nine books. I met him years ago at DBSA Boston (Depression Bipolar Support Alliance). He graciously accepted my request to read my memoir draft. His comments were insightful and immensely helpful.

 

I had avoided his book because I had the impression that it was exclusively about major depressive disorder: unipolar depression. To me, there is a great divide between unipolar depression and bipolar disorder. In my humble opinion, the two are very separate afflictions.

 

(I’m losing the culture wars: as you know, I object strenuously to the term ‘bipolar,’ but the American language has moved on and ‘manic depression’ seems to be headed for the same dustbin as ‘hysteria’ and ‘childbed fever.’ But manic depression is actually much more specific and effectively descriptive than those other abandoned medical terms.)

 

Although David Karp’s book is largely about depression, he has plenty to say about psychiatric medication more generally. He interviews fifty people who have taken psychiatric medication and explores the interplay between medication and issues of self, authenticity, and relationships, including the relationship formed with the medication itself. He acknowledges the great positive impact many medications have had on alleviating human suffering while exploring the double-edged-choice I make each day as I ingest psychotropic drugs.

 

And it is indeed double-edged. Medication has allowed me to live outside a locked psychiatric unit continually for 19 years. Most probably it has also diminished my mental powers. It may be affecting my metabolism (higher risk of diabetes) and vital organs (lithium is hard on the kidneys and thyroid.). Over time I’ve learned to live within its restraints. Both diminishment and adaptation have existed side by side for the 26 years since I was first prescribed lithium. Am I married to the medications, as David Karp suggests? I’d never thought of it that way, but yes. In what other sort of relationship entered into as an adult is there intimate contact for 26 years, with the expectation of a lifelong commitment?

Who I am

 I’m going to be controversial here. I don’t mean to speak for anyone else, but I will speak my mind.

A common discussion at my support group, DBSA Boston, over the years is the difference between being bipolar and having bipolar. In introducing myself as a facilitator at the newcomers’ meeting, I soften it even further, saying, I have bipolar disorder.

Most people reject the idea that they 'are' bipolar and opt for 'having' bipolar. But about eight years ago a young woman I know declared, "No, I am bipolar." I puzzled over it, wondering which felt truer to me. At the time I wasn't prepared to embrace her statement. I felt it was limiting.

As research for my memoir,, I just finished is it me or my meds? The author David Karp (whom I know through DBSA Boston) describes a support group meeting:

The meeting began with brief introductions during which nearly everyone said something like, “My name is Joe and I’m a depressive." After all the introductions, a young woman suggested that it would be far better if people said, “Hello, my name is so and so and I suffer from depression.”

A woman David Karp interviewed said:

Every time we take the medication it keeps constructing your identity as bipolar, or as whatever diagnosis, but you know, that is not who I am….It’s not, in any way, the whole of me. It’s a part of me. I am a teacher. I am a writer. I am a lover. I am a woman. [Mental illness] is just [something that] gets in the way a lot.

I have no intention of constructing anyone else’s identity, but lately I’ve been thinking that I am bipolar. (I actually hate that term, but for different reasons than the usual. Manic depression is so descriptive in a way that bipolar is not. I’m not a toy magnet, I don’t consist of two poles. I experience mania and I experience depression. However, I don’t particularly like the term ‘manic depressive.’ That does seem reductionist, as if I am totally in the thrall of those two states. I haven’t come up with a better noun (please suggest some), so for now I’ll use bipolar.

I checked out Word Hippo and found 273 (yes, I counted them: slow-news day here) adjectives for "vacillating between two extremes" and 49 "involving or having two extremes." Nouns are bipolarism, bipolarization, and bipolarity. I suppose it was too much to ask to web-search to satisfy me. (Give it a try, Matt. I so loved wrenmimic!)

Certainly when I’m psychotic or in a debilitating depression, there is something wrong. My life would be better, I could be more productive, better at relationships, if that didn’t happen. But the tendency to mood swings, the highs and lows (the 7-out of-10s and the 3-out-of-10s) seem to be ingrained deeply into the fiber of my being. The woman David Karp interviewed identifies herself as a teacher, writer, lover, woman. None of those identities is the whole of her but they are deep parts of her. They are parts of her identity. My manic depression isn’t the whole me, but it goes deep, very deep.

For the curious, Word Hippo suggests:

volatile, mercurial, oscillating, vacillating, capricious, spasmodic, undulating, two-faced, variable, unpredictable, changeable, unstable, erratic, inconstant, fickle, impulsive, tempermental, flighty, fluctuating, inconsistent, whimsical, mutable, fluid, unsteady, irregular, changeful, uncertain, unsettled, skittish, wayward, flickery, flakey, quicksilver, flaky, blowing hot and cold, irrepressible, wavering, excitable, protean, kaleidoscopic, moody, giddy, labile, active, movable, elastic, up in the air, unreliable, up and down, ever-changing, mobile, yo-yo, up-and-down, undependable, fitful, arbitrary, changing, random, varying, jerky, desultory, quirky, freakish, faddish, ungovernable, wild, haphazard, chance, vagarious, crotchety, constantly changing, ephemeral, shifting, transitory, frivolous, momentary, fleeting, peaky, short-lived, transient, impermanent, full of ups and downs, uneven, fluctuant, aimless, hit-or-miss, indiscriminate, unmethodical, casual, intermittent, chameleonic, sporadic, turbulent, along with waffling, fluky, directionless, orderless, blind, lost, reckless, offhand, iffy, sketchy, unsupported, off-and-on, objectless, quick-tempered, unreasoned, pointless, and more.

Not quite on the mark.

Moodswings

Last week I wrote a high-flying post, full of optimism and confidence. Since then I’ve spent some hours slogging through life. It's not really depression: it’s not the deep dark hole many describe. The self-loathing is absent: I feel a disappointment in my inability to accomplish what seems like reasonable goals on a reasonable timetable, but no self-hate.

 

This week, as my attitude towards my life has swung from optimism to, not pessimism exactly, but disappointment, I’m left wondering: is manic depression deep in my nature? Is it an essential part of my personality? Is it as immutable as my eye color and height?

 

I think it likely all of the above.

Yesterday morning I woke feeling discouraged. Monday is the day I have few outside obligations. When David was sick and I drove him to the Cox Clinic twice a week for leukemia treatments, I made no other commitments on Mondays and Thursdays. After he died, I promised myself I'd continue that schedule. Gradually obligations, freely entered into, crept back into my Thursdays, but I’ve kept Monday free, a ‘stay-at-home’ day. Each week it spreads before me like a field of freshly-fallen snow waiting for my imprint. And many Monday evenings I feel keenly a lack of accomplishment.

 

What if I accepted the ebb and flow of my moods as a part of me, just as the tides are part of the ocean? When I visit the shore, I don’t resist the tide, I carefully survey the beach for signs of the high tide mark, where the sand is completely dry and never drenched in saltwater. That’s where I place my blanket. If I've arrived at high tide, the surf is near the blanket, if low, I must walk a bit to enjoy the waves.

Winter sun

January 25, 2022 

All day I’ve experienced an overwhelmingly warm and powerful sense of wellbeing.

I love the Indo-European root kailo-. From that root we get so many nourishing words: wholeness, health, hale (as in hearty and...), wholesome, healing, hallowed, and holy. A depth of wisdom is expressed in a language where health comes from the same root as whole, and where healing and holiness are bound into that same family.

I’m a Self-help Junkie and am perennially dissatisfied with what I can accomplish in an hour, day, or year. This weekend, in yet one more attempt to harness my potential, and very aware, painfully aware, that I’m running out of time and personal resources (on turning 65), I devised a schedule for the week, mapping out what I would do each half hour of the day, from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Jim looked at my list and asked if it were punishment. I can see where he’s coming from, but I really didn’t think it was.

And this first day of the experiment bears it out. I’ve somehow given myself permission to actually accomplish my aspirations, from mundane but satisfying housework: laundry and sweeping and meal preparation, through answering emails, writing up board meeting minutes, and on to my greatest aspiration: writing.

Last winter, with so many activities cancelled or relegated to Zoom, I wrote about Fierce February Light and sunlight Piercing the Windowpanes. Activities still aren't back to pre-pandemic 'normal.' I find myself home all day on many days. I follow the sun's progress, rising in my south window and then falling to the west. It feels like magic. Distinct from a month ago, the sunlight pours into the windows all day with a different substance to it. I can feel without measuring that the sun is reaching higher at its zenith. All day I can tell it will set later than a week ago.

It has now set, making the woods behind the apartment buildings look soft and furry. I’ve always had that false impression, that the winter hills of New England and Pennsylvania (place of my nativity) are covered in brown sable fur and not made of prickly twigs and branches and hard trunks. It's a beautiful illusion.

The sunshine instills me with a deep and peaceful hope. Something is coming unstuck inside me.

Baby boy

Living in Indiana and New Hampshire, back in the 80s, I watched with mild envy during Christmas programs while some other young mother held her newborn baby in the annual nativity tableau. Peter was born too late, in mid-January, Matt and Sam were springtime babies; David was nearly three months old by Christmas.

This month, while we tended two of our grandchildren: Eliza, age 4, and Link (Lincoln), age 1, for nine days, I started learning "Mary Did You Know". I was inspired by our friend, Marilyn Foley Jodoin, who died November 22nd. Many remembrances of her included how she sang that song each Christmas, accompanying herself on guitar, her long, red hair swaying to the music. Eliza sang it to us, impressing us with how much of it she knew by heart.

So, at four in the morning, I sang it, over and over, to soothe wakeful Link. I looked into his clear but troubled eyes and wondered at the miracle of this baby boy. I realized that I'd always focused on the story of one night, but that baby of Bethlehem grew up, day by day: one week, one month, one year. I'm sure his mother marveled each day, long after the shepherds and magi were gone home, just as I had for my own six children and as I do now for our dear grandchildren. I’ve never felt closer to the story of Bethlehem than while looking into the large blue eyes of our babe of Boston.